Constructing living buildings: a review of relevant technologies for a novel application of biohybrid robotics

Biohybrid robotics takes an engineering approach to the expansion and exploitation of biological behaviours for application to automated tasks. Here, we identify the construction of living buildings and infrastructure as a high-potential application domain for biohybrid robotics, and review technological advances relevant to its future development. Construction, civil infrastructure maintenance and building occupancy in the last decades have comprised a major portion of economic production, energy consumption and carbon emissions. Integrating biological organisms into automated construction tasks and permanent building components therefore has high potential for impact. Live materials can provide several advantages over standard synthetic construction materials, including self-repair of damage, increase rather than degradation of structural performance over time, resilience to corrosive environments, support of biodiversity, and mitigation of urban heat islands. Here, we review relevant technologies, which are currently disparate. They span robotics, self-organizing systems, artificial life, construction automation, structural engineering, architecture, bioengineering, biomaterials, and molecular and cellular biology. In these disciplines, developments relevant to biohybrid construction and living buildings are in the early stages, and typically are not exchanged between disciplines. We, therefore, consider this review useful to the future development of biohybrid engineering for this highly interdisciplinary application.publishe

Reconfiguration of 3D Crystalline Robots Using O(log n) Parallel Moves

We consider the theoretical model of Crystalline robots, which have been introduced and prototyped by the robotics community. These robots consist of independently manipulable unit-square atoms that can extend/contract arms on each side and attach/detach from neighbors. These operations suffice to reconfigure between any two given (connected) shapes. The worst-case number of sequential moves required to transform one connected configuration to another is known to be Theta(n). However, in principle, atoms can all move simultaneously. We develop a parallel algorithm for reconfiguration that runs in only O(log n) parallel steps, although the total number of operations increases slightly to Theta(nlogn). The result is the first (theoretically) almost-instantaneous universally reconfigurable robot built from simple units.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure

Embryomorphic Engineering: Emergent innovation through evolutionary development

Embryomorphic Engineering, a particular instance of Morpho-genetic Engineering, takes its inspiration directly from biological development to create new hardware, software or network architectures by decentralized self-assembly of elementary agents. At its core, it combines three key principles of multicellular embryogenesis: chemical gradient di usion (providing positional information to the agents), gene regulatory networks (triggering their diferentiation into types, thus patterning), and cell division (creating structural constraints, thus reshaping). This chapter illustrates the potential of Embryomorphic Engineering in di erent spaces: 2D/3D physical swarms, which can nd applications in collective robotics, synthetic biology or nan- otechnology; and nD graph topologies, which can nd applications in dis- tributed software and peer-to-peer techno-social networks. In all cases, the speci c genotype shared by all the agents makes the phenotype's complex architecture and function modular, programmable and reproducible

Influence of self-disassembly of bridges on collective flow characteristics of swarm robots in a single-lane and periodic system with a gap

Inspired by the living bridges formed by ants, swarm robots have been developed to self-assemble bridges to span gaps and self-disassemble them. Self-disassembly of bridges may increase the transport efficiency of swarm robots by increasing the number of moving robots, and also may decrease the efficiency by causing gaps to reappear. Our aim is to elucidate the influence of self-disassembly of bridges on the collective flow characteristics of swarm robots in a single-lane and periodic system with a gap. In the system, robots span and cross the gap by self-assembling a single-layer bridge. We consider two scenarios in which self-disassembling bridges is prevented (prevent-scenario) or allowed (allow-scenario). We represent the horizontal movement of robots with a typical car-following model, and simply model the actions of robots for self-assembling and self-disassembling bridges. Numerical simulations have revealed the following results. Flow-density diagrams in both the scenarios shift to the higher-density region as the gap length increases. When density is low, allow-scenario exhibits the steady state of repeated self-assembly and self-disassembly of bridges. If density is extremely low, flow in this state is greater than flow in prevent-scenario owing to the increase in the number of robots moving horizontally. Otherwise, flow in this state is smaller than flow in prevent-scenario. Besides, flow in this state increases monotonically with respect to the velocity of robots in joining and leaving bridges. Thus, self-disassembling bridges is recommended for only extremely low-density conditions in periodic systems. This study contributes to the development of the collective dynamics of self-driven particles that self-assemble structures, and stirs the dynamics with other self-assembled structures, such as ramps, chains, and towers.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

KINE[SIS]TEM'17 From Nature to Architectural Matter

Kine[SiS]tem – From Kinesis + System. Kinesis is a non-linear movement or activity of an organism in response to a stimulus. A system is a set of interacting and interdependent agents forming a complex whole, delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, influenced by its environment. How can architectural systems moderate the external environment to enhance comfort conditions in a simple, sustainable and smart way? This is the starting question for the Kine[SiS]tem’17 – From Nature to Architectural Matter International Conference. For decades, architectural design was developed despite (and not with) the climate, based on mechanical heating and cooling. Today, the argument for net zero energy buildings needs very effective strategies to reduce energy requirements. The challenge ahead requires design processes that are built upon consolidated knowledge, make use of advanced technologies and are inspired by nature. These design processes should lead to responsive smart systems that deliver the best performance in each specific design scenario. To control solar radiation is one key factor in low-energy thermal comfort. Computational-controlled sensor-based kinetic surfaces are one of the possible answers to control solar energy in an effective way, within the scope of contradictory objectives throughout the year.FC

Self-deformable modular robot inspired by cellular structure

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 15-16).In this paper, we present a modular robot design inspired by the creation of complex structures and functions in biology via deformation. Our design is based on the Tensegrity model of cellular structure, where active filaments within the cell contract and expand to control individual cell shape, and sheets of such cells undergo large-scale shape change through the cooperative action of connected cells. Such deformations play a role in many processes: early embryo shape change, heart and intestine function, and in lamprey locomotion. Modular robotic systems that replicate the basic deformable multicellular structure have the potential to quickly generate large-scale shape change and create time-varying shapes to achieve different global functions. We present a design and initial hardware implementation of this model. Our design includes four different modular components: (1) actuating links, (2) passive (compressive) links, (3) elastic surface membranes, and (4) universal connecting interfaces. In both hardware implementation and simulation, we show several self-deformable structures that can be generated from these four components, including the deformable surface, expandable cube, terrain-adaptive bridge from [1] and some examples inspired by biology. We argue that self-deformation is more appropriate for dynamic and sensing-adaptive shape change in a certain class of tasks.by Kristina M. Haller.S.B